I received a review copy today of The Feed Zone Cookbook (Fast and Flavorful Food for Athletes), by Biju Thomas and Allen Lim, and available through www.velopress.com. The book is of particular interest to me because of my various food allergies and the Feed Zone's workarounds for some of the common ones. Those of you with food allergies are all too well aware of the difficulty in coming up with pre-race and race day foods, plus decent packable options!

I was a bit delayed on getting started with the recipes, but here's a bit of an update:

Right from the start, the clear-headed explanation of the frequent disconnect between [food] science and real-world application really spoke to me. There's nothing like knowing you're in for a b.s.-free ride! I also like that the authors clearly state their goal of catering to nutritional needs of athletes, rather than being a weight loss guide.

The book does a good job of explaining nutritional needs of athletes and food timing very succinctly.

It even diagrams how best to wrap your own portable snacks (energy bar replacements)! Talk about covering the little things.

The book has several useful sections at the end for how to prepare basic food elements common to many of the recipes, nutritional content, and cooked vs. uncooked volume charts.

Quinoa and Berries, pg. 36 ... When I first went on my wheat/dairy/egg-free diet, I ate quinoa fairly regularly, often combining it with amaranth. For some reason, I've gone away from (forgotten) it in recent years. Seeing this recipe rekindled my quinoa interest, and the dish turned out quite nice. If you've never had quinoa before, my best description would be a tougher version of tapioca. It works well as any meal, really, despite being listed here as a breakfast dish. It encourages/forces you to chew your food more than most people are accustomed to, but that's a good thing.

Beet Juice, pg. 113 ... I haven't tried it exactly as prepared in the recipe, but I was quite pleased with beets as a new addition to my smoothies. I never would have thought to try that combination, but the cookbook makes a strong case for the nutritional qualities of beets.